Scaling Down: Notes From the Laundry Room

Abstract

This essay tells the story of a personal experiment in deploying a “deliberative technology” called Polis to start a conversation about the norms of my apartment building’s shared laundry room—a small, quasi-public space ordinarily governed mostly by unspoken rules. The Polis conversation drew meaningful engagement from neighbors, who both voted on shared norms for the space and suggested concrete (and ultimately effective) ways to improve it. Reflecting on this example, I argue that beyond their familiar promise of “scaling up” deliberation, tools like Polis can also facilitate “scaling down,” making it feasible to convene conversations and build a sense of shared interest even in small-scale, everyday settings like the apartment laundry room.